Youth as actors of social change

Adressing youth as actor of social change on the one hand implies to analyse under what conditions young people can be included in and exert full citizenship status. On the other hand, it means discarding a perspective according to which young people are merely affected by social change in a passive way but tries to identify to what extent they play an active role in these processes by reinforcing or modifying structures through individual coping strategies and life styles. The project UP2YOUTH is structured by three thematic working groups on Young Parenthood, Minority Youth and Youth Participation. The working groups analyse existing research in a comparative perspective in order to identify and ideally close research gaps with regard to themes which on European level are clearly under-researched. Therefore, secondary and comparative analysis is carried out across the three sub-themes with regard to four main dimensions: Individualisation, Learning, Culture and Policy Level. A second aim of the research network is to produce a Glossary of key concepts in order to clarify core concepts of the project, their origin, their use and the way they relate to one another.